Old Orcish is the ancient language of the Orcs, and most likely the precursor to the language known as Orcish. While it is unknown when the langage first developed, it cannot have been any later than the time of the rule of King Torug gro-Igron, before the first siege of Orsinium in 1E 950; nor is there any definite evidence to when it evolved into modern Orcish, although it is reasonable that it could not have evolved any later than 3E 417, by the time of which modern Orcish was well established by the Orcs of High Rock and Hammerfell.[1] Seeing that there is evidence for the Old Orcish language having been largely forgotten by 2E 583[2], it's impossible to know precisely when this transition occurred, due to the scarcity of information about both the ancient and the modern language.

Like many other ancient languages, Old Orcish lacks a linguistic corpus, its literature being preserved, in a vast enough quantity for linguistic analysis, in but one known sample of poetry: "Torug ag Krazak" (translated into Cyrodilic as "Torug at the Summit"), a series of inscriptions at the tomb of Torug gro-Igron, the founder of the first Orsinium. Apart from this, little remains of this language but scattered words and phrases.